Reviews /151

Some sections will cause problems for most listeners: the rather severe opening (and, interestingly enough, one of the last written) baritone recitative with surging orchestral undertow, and the finale—a magnificent, but musically involved, Gloria (in English). University of Choruses (David A. Shand and J. Marlowe Nielson, conductors) and South High Girls' Chorus (Armont Willardsen, conductor) do commendably. The still immature college voices make one wish for greater depth, power, and richness of tone quality, particularly in climactic moments— as in the finale, which fails to reach its potential. This leads one to the question: Why not the ? Its 375 mature, routined voices would seem the answer. I've asked this question for years—ever since the Oratorio's completion in 1947. Robertson completed the Oratorio with the Tabernacle Choir and the Brig- ham Young University Symphony (which he then conducted) in mind. He wrote a special Tabernacle organ part for Alexander Schreiner. A few months later he won the Reichhold Award, left for the University of Utah—and the Oratorio went on the shelf. It remained—years later—for non-Mormon-Greek-Portuguese-Swiss-French- Jewish ("Salt Lake City is the only city in the world where I'm a gentile") to bring it off the shelf to performance. The day will—and should—come when the Tabernacle Choir and the Philadelphia Orchestra or Utah Symphony bring out another—better—stereo Book of Mormon Oratorio pressing. It would seem to be a logical recording project for the Church's "most effective missionary." One hopes that the Choir's tight, demanding schedule could accommodate such a venture. And while we're at it, why not annual July 24th Tabernacle performances by Tabernacle Choir and orchestra as a serious counterpart to Crawford Gates' popular Mormon folk-musical, Promised Valley, w h i c h enjoyed a successful sixty- day tourist run under Church sponsorship last summer? What an improvement on the annual Days of '47 pageant. Until a new, better Oratorio recording is made, the Vanguard album, with Arnold Friberg cover-drawing, is available—but not moving briskly—at some record dealers or the Utah Symphony office. We might hope the M.I.A. would consider offering the Oratorio as a mass-listening project some year in the Church's myriad cultural halls. The existing enviable physical culture program might be persuaded to move over for a week or so.

SHORT NOTICE

The Latter-day Saint Family. Compiled by Blaine R. Porter. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1966, xii, 438 pp. $4.95.

This book is a compilation of forty selections on family life in general and Mormon family life in particular. Dr. Porter has wisely selected representative writings from well-known authorities outside as well as within the Church, thus adding a commendable scholarly dimension to the book. As the author states in his preface, the book is not a comprehensive picture 152/DIALOGUE: A Journal of Mormon Thought of the Mormon family. At the outset, Dr. Reuben Hill analyzes the "American Family Today," in an article which introduces studies of divorce, mobility, governmental influences, economic pressures, family size, and other problems. Against this general background, the book limits itself to three areas: teaching moral and religious values, the eternal relationship of the family, and authori- tarian versus democratic practices in family relations. Here we find much that is instructive and also some repetition. Victor A. Christopherson repeats a num- ber of paragraphs in his three articles. In others the same illustrations and scriptural quotations turn up again and again, probably because about three- fourths of the selections are reprints from the Improvement Era and other Church publications. I recommend among the many informative and helpful essays Joshua Liebman's "Love Thyself Properly" and the Overstreets' "The Unloving Person- ality and the Religion of Love." For students of family relations or for anyone wishing a permanent collection of articles by Latter-day Saint General Authori- ties on the concept of eternal marriage and the family in its theological frame- work, the book will be valuable. Shirley B. Paxman Provo, Utah

. . . and truth on every part is so deare unto me, that I will not lie to bring any man in love and admiration with God and his works, for God needeth not the lies of men. from Topsell's APOLOGIA {1607)